


Wishes

by Berseker



Category: The Maze Runner (2014)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-02 05:49:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2801852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Berseker/pseuds/Berseker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s one thing that Gally wants.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wishes

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry if there’s any inconsistence with the books. This is more movie-verse, because I only read the first one. ANYWAY.

There’s this one thing that Gally wants.

 

Well, no, he wants a hell of a lot of things. He’d love to get out of here, for starters. But since that’s not happening any time soon, there’s this other thing he wants.

 

He sees Alby walking around, and he thinks – come on, just once, I’m not asking much here. His yearning is a mix of admiration and resentment and hero worship, because Alby is…

 

Who knows? There’s something unique about him, something that bends and convinces and commands respect, something in that way he has of staring you down. Gally is crazy proud of him. But Alby would be weirded out if he mentioned it – and who could blame him – so he keeps it to himself. It doesn’t make it any less true.

 

 

 

 

 

Alby leads and they let him because everyone agrees that it makes stuff better. He makes it better. Life would be worse without Alby. Look, there’s only so many ways of saying this, and Gally uses them all when a new greenie comes up, because some of them are a bit rebellious and try to go all who-do-you-think-you-are and Alby deals with them, but Gally helps. So does Newt. So does everyone, really.

 

Alby is important. If he weren’t there, they’d have to invent him. He knows it and he says it, too.

 

Just once, and he’s maybe a little drunk. They were doing the bonfire and he had too much of that weird stuff Gally did, and it went straight to his head. He’s laughing, and then Gally is laughing too – his eyebrows always give him a mean look, but it softens when he laughs.

 

“You’re different when you laugh,” Gally says and regrets it right away, but Alby is amused and the drink makes him bold, so.

 

“Swear to God,” he says, “I’m this close to calling you my king.”

 

“Do it. It might catch.” But then Alby shakes his head, and he says it textually, if I didn’t exist it would be someone else, you’d made me up somehow.

 

“Yeah no,” Gally says. “No, it had to be you. Man. It couldn’t be anyone but you.”

 

It had to be someone strong and brave and clever, and charismatic and all that shuck. It had to be someone with this legendary reputation and come on, surviving on your own, here? Being the first, then creating this structure, this world, to everyone else who came next?

 

And what are the options? Gally is a bully and he knows it, and he’s cool with it. Minho is a brat and Newt…

 

Yeah. Newt.

 

Newt cracked and they saw it, his insides spilled open for everyone to see, ugly sobbing and screaming and cursing the walls. It wasn’t even a Griever, just a stupid accident and they can’t afford that here. So, not a good leader. No matter how warm his smile.

 

So Alby’s position is pretty secure, as long as he doesn’t go crazy himself. As long as he keeps his shit together.

 

As long as he keeps grinning like that when there’s only the two of them talking.

 

 

 

 

Alby came up with the rules. They talked and voted and agreed to it. Then he went and broke them.

 

He broke them when Newt got hurt and failed to come back in time. Alby went out and picked him up, and brought him home safely.

 

For a given value of home. For a given value of safely.

 

Gally was appalled. He was bloody fucking furious, and after the worst was over, when the med-jacks had fixed Newt’s legs to the best of their ability, and Alby came from the infirmary looking haunted and wounded and so insanely hurt, Gally let him have it.

 

You can’t go around making exceptions for yourself, we talked about this, we decided we’d have no heroics, runners have to come back and if they don’t, then they didn’t, no mad dash through the fucking maze, no search party, no not-a-man-left-behind bullshit, we can’t break the rules just because you think he’s important, and on and on and on he went, and Alby let him talk.

 

Then he said enough. Enough, Gally, drop it. You don’t know even half of it, he said. And sat by himself that night, silent and brooding, and they could see his silhouette cut against the fire and they could hear whimpers from the infirmary, and it was the worst night for pretty much everyone.

 

We won’t do it for you, Gally said the next day, I mean it. Newt wouldn’t, I won’t, none of us will. If you’re lost, you’re lost. Rules are rules.

 

Rules are rules, Alby agrees, that’s all good. Now fucking drop it.

 

 

 

 

Ben says they won’t find a way out, ever.

 

“Someone put us here, right? They built the thing and put us right in the middle, and for what? They don’t want us to leave, that’s why the walls move around. That’s why we can’t go out at night. If they see we’re getting close, they’ll just move stuff and we’ll have to start it all over again.”

 

He put a lot of thought into it. Gally listens, and wonders if they shouldn’t give the kid something else to do. Something that doesn’t involve going crazy running around in a labyrinth.

 

He’s not even saying Ben is weak. But some people are just not cut for stuff. Look at Minho, he’s doing it every day and he’s completely fine. Not Ben, tho. Ben is a mess.

 

“And they see what we do and hear whatever we say, you know that. Like, how would they know what we need? Even stuff we don’t ask for? They see what’s going on and send us what they think we could use, and then fuck with our minds with those moving walls. But they’re watching. There’s some place somewhere and people are there, and they’re watching us, Gally, and I wish I could have two minutes with one of them alone. Just two minutes.”

 

“There’s a lot you can do in two minutes,” Gally agrees, and this derails the whole conversation, because the crazy rambling turns into a hypothetical gore-fest. Two minutes is a hell of a long time.

 

When Alby is clutching Newt against his chest, Ben whispers I’d kill them. Thirty seconds, tops. I’d break their necks, for watching this and doing nothing.

 

Who can blame him? Gally would like to have a go too.

 

He’s keeper of the builders, so he builds a cane. A really nice one if he can say so himself. Newt thanks him with this hollow half-smirk. He wants them to forget all about it, to pretend they didn’t see him crying. Gally almost says it’s ok, if there’s one time to cry it’s when you accidentally destroy your ankle, but he doesn’t. He’s not good at comforting people.

 

And he can forget about it, or pretend he forgot already. He wants to do that.

 

Newt uses the cane for a long time, then puts it away for a while, and walks around with a limp. Gally is ok with it.

 

Alby isn’t. He checks on him all day, holds his elbow sometimes, and Newt leans on him.

 

Gally pretends not to notice it.

 

 

 

Crazy talk, Alby says, when he hears about Ben’s theory and the Creators ever watching. But he believes it too, Gally can tell.

 

“I hope they’re enjoying the show,” Gally says, and, since they’re drunk anyway and there’s a fire going and Alby is smiling and Newt is somewhere else, he adds, “Say we give them something to watch.”

 

“Say we do. What do you have in mind?”

 

So Gally leans over and Alby doesn’t move. And before the world crashes in, before he changes his mind, before he thinks of a boy bigger than rules limping somewhere behind them, Gally takes what he wants.

 

Alby’s mouth tastes like homemade alcohol.

 

No. His mouth tastes like home.


End file.
